


something i can breathe in

by brunettereader



Series: brunettereader drabbles [11]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Baking, Canon Compliant, Fluff, I mean there is a little angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, but it's mostly fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:09:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27228637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brunettereader/pseuds/brunettereader
Summary: One of Lance’s rules in life is that decorating cookies should be fun, damn it. And Lance isn’t going to let anyone take the fun out it, not even Keith. Before he can stop himself, he grabs a hippo from his plate that wasn’t iced and reached towards one of the bowls of goo that Hunk had modified to taste like frosting. He picked up the knife out of the red frosting and slathered the cookie with a thick layer.“Mr. Mullet Man,” Lance says in a high voice. He walks the hippo cookie around between the space separating him and Keith. “Mr. Mullet Man, decorating is fun. Say it with Mr. Hippo. ‘Decorating cookies is fun.’”---Or the story of how Lance realized he has a family in space, too.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: brunettereader drabbles [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830391
Comments: 4
Kudos: 73





	something i can breathe in

**Author's Note:**

> This is a few years old and was originally posted on my [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/brunette_reader20/).
> 
> Title comes from the song "Homesick" by Dua Lipa. Any necessary translations are at the end!

“Keith, I’m just saying,” Lance says, not looking up from his intricate work. “If this was a competition—and I’m not saying it is, but it really totally is—I would be beating your pancake.”

“Pancake, Lance? Really?” Pidge snorts at the same time that Keith snaps, “Oh, shut your quiznak.”

Lance just smirks to himself and lets his work do the talking for him. He _knows_ he’s dusting everyone right now (with the exception of possibly Allura).

“Well, this isn’t really a fair competition,” Hunk says, ever the diplomat. “I know for a fact Lance did this every Christmas with his family.”

Lance scoffs. “Hunk! I’ve been betrayed.”

Hunk just shrugs. “You can’t be mad at me. I’m like, the whole reason we’re even doing this.” The group mumbles in agreement before falling back into concentrated silence. Lance looks up from his latest creation and sneaks a look around the room.

Pidge sits next to him with their sleeves pushed up and their legs crossed. Their glasses rest perched on the top of their head, dusted with evidence of this afternoon. On the other side of Lance is Hunk, and going by his face, he’s fully focused on the task at hand. His tongue is sticking out just slightly, and his eyes are squinted in concentration. Shiro sits at the head of the table and is so far bent over his work that Lance can’t see what he was doing. Next to him is a smiling Allura. Lance hasn’t seen her this relaxed in a long time, and she looks at peace making her small adjustments. And finally, across from Lance is a scowling Keith. His eyebrows are furrowed, and he’s got a frown etched into his face. Lance sighs.

“This isn’t rocket science, Mr. Grumpy Pants,” Lance says. Keith glares from across the table, and Lance beams at him. “It’s just decorating cookies.”

If anything, Keith’s glare grows darker. “I didn’t grow up doing this,” he grumbles.

Lance glances down at his perfectly shaped animal cut-out cookies. When Hunk had burst into Lance’s room shouting, “I MADE COOKIES,” Lance first jumped into Hunk’s arms, screaming, “Hunk, you beautiful space merman!” Then, he tripped over himself as he ran around the castle grabbing and dragging everyone into the kitchen with a determination that shocked even himself. Aside from flying Blue, he hadn’t felt this giddy since he left Earth. He saw this moment as a non-mind-melding, gladiator-fighting, maze-navigating bonding opportunity, and he wasn’t about to let it pass.

But, one of Lance’s rules in life is that decorating cookies should be fun, damn it. And Lance isn’t going to let anyone take the fun out of it, not even Keith. Before he can stop himself, he grabs a hippo from his plate that wasn’t iced and reached towards one of the bowls of goo that Hunk had modified to taste like frosting. He picked up the knife out of the red frosting and slathered the cookie with a thick layer.

“Mr. Mullet Man,” Lance says in a high voice. He walks the hippo cookie around between the space separating him and Keith. “Mr. Mullet Man, decorating is _fun_. Say it with Mr. Hippo. ‘Decorating cookies is _fun._ ’”

Next to him, Pidge groans while Hunk chuckles. Keith sets down the cookie and spoon in his hands and narrows his eyes further at Lance. “What is that voice?” he asks.

Lance sets the hippo cookie down and reaches for the sprinkle-like things that Hunk made. “I don’t know. It’s a voice I always used with _mis sobrinas_ ,” he says as he pours sprinkles on the hippo. “Whenever they would fight over cookies, I could usually get them to stop by distracting them with talking cookies. They would always giggle.” 

He huffs out a laugh and grins. “And they would get so ridiculous about decorating cookies. ‘ _Uncle Laaaaance, Rosa ate all the purple icing and now my Christmas tree has to be_ green _.’_ Or, sometimes it would be, _‘Sabrina broke my candy caaaane.’_ There always had to be extras of everything, and icing always ended up _everywhere_.”

Looking up from his hippo, he sees the rest of the table looking at him curiously. Shiro and Allura send soft smiles his way while Hunk shoots him a knowing look. Pidge has turned their body to face Lance and has their head propped on their hand.

“Uh, sorry,” Lance fumbles out. “I was rambling.”

Keith stands up and reaches across the table, grabbing one of Lance’s perfect cookies—a cat. He walks the cat in the space between him and Lance, just like Lance had earlier.

“Does, uh,” Keith says, in a lower voice than his normal one, “does Mr. Hippo want to be friends with Mr. Cat?”

For a brief second, no one says anything.

Surprisingly, Shiro breaks first. A laugh booms from him as he leans back in his chair. Allura covers her mouth with her hand, but her eyes twinkle like she’s smiling. Hunk puts his head on the table, but his shoulders shake with his chuckles. Pidge laughs so hard that they start snorting.

Keith drops the cookie back on Lance’s plate and crosses his arms as he sits back down.

And Lance, Lance just grins so hard across the table. While the table dissolves into giggles, Lance picks up the hippo cookie again. “Of course Mr. Hippo and Mr. Cat can be friends,” he says in his high voice. He hands the cookie across the table to Keith.

Keith takes the cookie and sends a small smile across the table at Lance.

After that, there’s less determined cookie decorating and more of the kind of cookie decorating Lance is used to. Pidge eats all the green icing just because. Hunk spills sprinkles all over the table. Keith steals some of Lance’s perfectly decorated cookies, and Lance pretends not to notice. Everyone laughs at Shiro when he finally shows the group his cookies, which he’s managed to burn to a crisp. And Allura somehow makes perfect macaroon-like cookies, and everyone groans at her perfection.

It’s not exactly decorating cookies with his nieces, but it’s kind of perfect in a different way.

\---

Lance wakes up screaming. He sits straight up and puts his head between his knees, trying to even his breaths. He shivers even as he feels sweat run down his back.

“It was just a dream,” he says to himself. He breathes in deeply, feels tears well in his eyes. If he was on Earth, he would shoot his sister a text or scroll through his pictures of his family until he calmed down. But he’s not on Earth, and so he’s left with the images of his family dead because Lance is useless, because Lance wasn’t there, because Lance couldn’t defend the universe, because Lance is a failure.

And Lance can’t sit another minute in this room. He grabs the blanket off his bed and heads for the bridge. He thinks maybe seeing the great big universe will calm him down. Maybe.

He slips down the dimmed hall, blanket wrapped tightly around him. He’s managed to calm down with the few steps he’s taken and his breathing has slowed, but he still shakes. When he turns the corner, he spots a familiar back in the spot where he normally sits on nights like this.

“You’re in my spot, Red,” Lance groans as he stumbles into the room.

Keith looks up and moves to stand. Lance waves him off and sits next to him on the floor, pulling the blanket farther tighter around himself.

A moment of silence passes where Lance just looks and looks and looks. He can see stars that his family will never see. He has seen planets that his family wouldn’t even be able to imagine. He’s met people his family will never meet. He’s done things his family may never believe.

In that split moment, the longing in his heart is as raw as an exposed nerve.

“You okay?” Keith asks, breaking Lance out of his spinning thoughts.

Lance shakes his head, trying to clear the endless emotions from his thoughts. He forces out a laugh. “Peachy keen, jelly bean,” he says, shooting a forced grin Keith’s way.

Keith narrows his eyes at him. “Lance.”

He looks away. Clears his throat. “It’s nothing,” he says. “Just, you know, silly stuff. I’ll be fine.”

As he stares out into the galaxy and tries to find a recognizable constellation, he feels Keith nudge him. He turns back to face him and rests his cheek on his knee.

“You’re never this serious,” Keith states. “So, if you’re actually not being a goofball about something, it can’t be silly.” He finishes with a lopsided grin that warms Lance’s heart.

Lance sighs. He might as well talk to someone. He won’t be going back to sleep until he does.

“It’s just,” Lance starts as he pulls the blanket from around his shoulders and rests it across his legs. “It’s these dreams about my family. Like, you know, something happens to them because I’m out here, and it’s all my fault.”

Keith’s eyebrows are furrowed, the grin from earlier replaced with a small frown. “What do you mean it’s all your fault?”

He shrugs and looks down at his feet. “Because I’m not there protecting them. Because I’m out here, trying my best to protect them and the rest of the universe, and I’m not good enough at this.”

“But, Lance—” Keith starts, but Lance cuts him off.

“I’m not smart like Pidge or friendly like Hunk or a leader like Shiro or a natural pilot like you,” Lance lists. He feels Keith looking at him, but he just picks at a loose string on his blanket. Keith doesn’t say anything, so Lance figures that he agrees.

“That’s bullshit,” Keith blurts.

Lance whips his head to face him. “Wh-what?”

“You heard me,” Keith says. “I said that’s bullshit. Lance, you’re the reason we’re an actual _team_.”

“I don’t—” he starts, but Keith cuts him off this time.

“No,” Keith continues. “You make sure Pidge sleeps if they’ve been working too late. You encourage Hunk all the time so he doesn’t feel down. You braid Allura’s hair just because. You are pretty much the only one who can make Shiro laugh. You _dived on a bomb_ for Coran. And you make me interact with you guys so I’m not ‘the loner.’” He finishes with air quotes around the last two words, and if Lance wasn’t in shock, he’d be somewhat impressed that Keith knows how to use air quotes.

Lance blinks a few times, tries to compose a response. “I just do those things because you all need them to be your best,” Lance offers.

“ _Exactly_ ,” Keith says, exasperated. “That’s what makes you invaluable. You make us a team. You make us a _family_.”

“Oh,” Lance says as he finally looks away from Keith’s earnest face. He stares at his knees and tries to wrap his mind around what Keith just declared.

“I mean,” Keith stutters and Lance looks back at him, sees the conviction fall from his face. “It’s just, this _feels_ like a family to me, and I know you guys all have people back on Earth who are your actual families and I don’t, but you guys are my family and—”

“Hey,” Lance interrupts as he reaches across to Keith and places his hand on the red paladin’s knee. “Yeah, we may have families back on Earth, but this is a family, too. You guys are my family. Even you, Mr. Hotshot.”

Keith shoves him so hard that his hand falls off his knee, but he laughs despite it. Lance watches Keith’s face split with a grin and realizes he feels lighter. He scoots closer to Keith, lets his blanket cover both of their legs, and leans back against the control panel.

They sit in silence again, watching the stars pass and constellations swim. Seconds or minutes or hours pass, and Lance feels his eyelids start to droop. He knows he should head back to his bed and try to sleep again, but he’s content here. He feels a yawn coming and tries to stifle it.

Keith nudges him again. “You should get some sleep,” he whispers.

Lance shakes his head. “Too tired to move,” he grumbles.

“I’m not carrying you back to bed,” Keith states. “I’m not your mother.”

“No,” Lance agrees. “I wouldn’t say you’re like my mother either.” He closes his eyes and shifts just slightly, so his head rests on Keith’s shoulder. He feels him stiffen just the slightest before moving his arm to come around Lance.

They sit quietly again for just a moment before Keith breaks it. “What am I to you then?” he asks softly. 

Lance thinks just briefly before he states, “ _Mi_ _pareja_.”

Keith hums in agreement. Lance isn’t sure that Keith knows what that word means, but he thinks he gets the sentiment. Either way, Lance can’t fight off sleep anymore. He scoots closer into Keith’s side and thinks—just briefly, before he gives into the pull of slumber—that his found family is just as good as his family by blood.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it, please comment, recommend it to your friends, give me a kudos, something to let me know you enjoyed it. Your notes fuel me. :D
> 
> Otherwise, stop by my online profiles and say hi!
> 
> [CARRD](https://brunettereader.carrd.co/) | [INSTAGRAM](https://www.instagram.com/brunette_reader20/) | [TWITTER](https://www.twitter.com/brunette_reader/)  
>   
>  **TRANSLATIONS**  
>  _mis sobrinas_ \- my nieces  
>  _Mi pareja_ \- my partner


End file.
